The Fortunate Era (Carnegie Mellon, 2013)

Praise for The Fortunate Era

“Smith’s life’s work has been a quest for earthly insights into transcendent visions, and he writes as though he were a gentler version of Dante’s Minos, making stoical judgments over moments of his own life, consigning them to placements in hell, purgatory, and up to the brink of heaven. He’s looked inside and felt the daily terror, yet within that terror, a new life.” -- Garrett Hongo

Valentine

Back then, for all I cared,God could have been a spiderGlossy as a buttercupSunning in the gardenOf the first womanTime gave me toAnd then took back.What I mean is, once, like ice,Something pierced my heartWith a light So fierceIt heightenedEvery thin-stemmed flower after.

That’s how I think of God now,Each time--Going back to her--That immense and holy cold, an arrowSinking in.